US Software Firm SAS Exits China After 25 Years

An anonymous reader shares a report: US software company SAS Institute has withdrawn from mainland China and dismissed its local staff, according to a Beijing-based employee affected by the move, as the analytics specialist ended more than two decades of operations amid intense domestic competition and geopolitical tensions. The company on Thursday announced the lay-offs via an email and hosted a short video call, in which executives thanked local employees for their contribution and cited "organisational optimisation" for the exit, according to the employee.

"SAS is ceasing direct business operations in China," an SAS spokeswoman said on Friday in response to the Post's inquiry. "This decision reflects a broader shift in how we operate globally, optimising our footprint and ensuring long-term sustainability." The company would continue having a presence on the mainland via third-party partners, according to the spokeswoman.

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

AC ain't wrong...

No. Need to make room for more AI spending

[will4]

It is easier to close an entire office, stop selling in that country especially if the profit margins are thin, so that the budget could be spent on AI.

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[will4]

Can the headline be "Company closes satellite office due to costs and using money for more AI spending"

So China is protectionist for real

[rsilvergun]

Their government builds up local industries and squeezes out foreign industries. They're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts or because they care about their workers, the Chinese government could not care less about anyone or anything except themselves and power they are fascists.

A century or two ago European countries and America engaged in heavy duty colonialism using military force. After the world wars we stopped using military force and switched to economic Force. China does that now

I've lost job opportunities

[rsilvergun]

To both UK and Canada because as an American I cost a minimum of $15,000 a year or more because of our private health insurance and every year that goes up. Every year I get a shit raise and it's because my health insurance costs went up 15 or 20% and my employer instead of giving me a raise absorbs those costs. This year it finally got to the point where they raised my costs by 5%.

It is extremely hard to compete with countries that have a single pair of healthcare system because per the Congressional bu

Re:

[Jeslijar]

The employee portion of insurance premiums at my org is rising 81% this year. They have conveniently not provided the employer share, like they have done all years prior.

I wish I was joking.

They are probably not needed anymore

[gweihir]

With all the "China bad!" mind-set, China has managed to leave the west behind in many things. Not that I think this is a good thing, but it is a fact and ignoring facts does NOT make things better, even if many people seem to believe that.

Re: They are probably not needed anymore

[eclectro]

Their aggressive military actions against Tawain and their (Well Xiâ(TM)s) statements about a probable hostile takeover over Tawaiin by 2027 kind of makes them bad. Or did we decide that autocratic Putin was not âoebadâ for invading Ukraine so he could bring back the Soviet era??
And Xiâ(TM)s promise to Trump that he will not invade Taiwan during Trumpâ(TM)s term in office seems more about playing Trump as the fool he probably perceives Trump to be.

Ergo, fomenting war is a bad thing,

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[gweihir]

And fail, because that was not even my argument.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they were German?

They are. But German workers demand horrible things, like good wages and safe working conditions. So companies like SAS move their operations to China where the government is not concerned about those things.

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[Skjellifetti2]

SAS is headquartered in North Carolina. They have also had a long standing reputation as a great place to work.

I used their mainframe product in the 80s for my MSc. These days, I mostly use R and other open source tools and I suspect that these have put a big dent in their sales.

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[GloryWacky]

You're thinking of SAP.

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[Gilmoure]

You're right, you're right.

The rich sold the US out

[TheMiddleRoad]

For quick profits, the rich gave all of the US's technology away. This has not been a Democrat or Republican choice. This has been a Democrat AND Republican choice. They fucked us, and they're sipping their martinis on yachts in Monaco right now. All I can say about Steve Jobs is that I'm glad that motherfucker got cancer and died, and I hope that the rest of these rich assholes get the same and worse.

Re: The rich sold the US out

[BigEddieD]

Can I get a hallelujah for this man who speaks truths, the wording of which has been forbidden by the high masters since time immemorial. They demand we do not question why the same people who have led us to this place keep insisting that they are the only ones who can get us out. It would seem to me that we've reached the American equilibrium, where we keep getting out exactly what we can be half-assed to put in, which is exactly squat and maybe, if we're lucky and the good lord don't mind, some diddly. We

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

Great. The only guy who agrees with me is even less popular than I am.

The problem with SAS

[bunyip]

I learned SAS In the early 80s and used it extensively. At the time, it was easily the best data analysis software available. About 15 years ago I wanted to get a few copies for my consulting team and we were looking at more than $50K / seat. Do you think Chinese users want to pay that sort of money to a US firm?

SAS sued a source compatible competitor (World Programming) out of existence some years back, to destroy competition and maintain their high prices. I had trialled the World Programming solution and it worked very nicely.

These days I use Python and a few other open-source tools. I suspect that Chinese data analysts are mostly doing the same.

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[ATechGuy]

SAS sued a source compatible competitor (World Programming) out of existence some years back, to destroy competition and maintain their high prices. I had trialled the World Programming solution and it worked very nicely.

SAS lost the copyright infringement portion of the lawsuit. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

World Programming was doing well enough to be acquired by Altair in the last couple of years (in turn acquired by Siemens). We use what is now called Altair SLC to run legacy SAS programs.

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[garcia]

SAS has been dead for 15y; it started with R and then Python absolutely destroyed it. No one teaches SAS in universities any longer, why would they? It's terribly expensive and absolutely fucking dead.

We migrated away from SAS back in 2017 and never looked back. The only verticals still using it are heavily regulated and running long-standing legacy code that they're slowly migrating to Python.

I remember absolutely dying when they tried to renegotiate our contract UP back in 2015. I flat out told them they